Orders of the Day — Clean Air Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 3 November 1955.

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Photo of Sir Gerald Nabarro Sir Gerald Nabarro , Kidderminster 12:00, 3 November 1955

It is a source of no little gratification to a private Member that Her Majesty's Government should honour an undertaking and a pledge given personally to him upon the occasion of his Private Members' Measure. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the alacrity he has displayed so early in this Parliamentary Session in honouring the undertaking he gave on 4th February this year, to the general effect that Her Majesty's then Government would introduce a comprehensive clean air Measure to replace a Private Member's Measure which, in fairness to right hon. and hon. Members opposite, I should say was signed by six Members of the Opposition and supported by five Conservative Members—the Bill being presented by myself.

There I have to halt in my commendation of the Minister's activities. He has introduced a Clean Air Bill, but if I were asked to say what I think of it in a few words, I should say that it is a partial clean air Measure. In this complex and vitally important matter, it is necessary at the outset to have in the Bill an unequivocal declaration that it is national policy to secure clean air. Sir Hugh Beaver thought the same. In Cmd. 9322 he wrote: It is basic to all our recommendations that at the outset it should be made the declared national policy to secure clean air, and that a statement to this effect should find expression in the new legislation… Therefore, on the Committee stage I shall ask the Committee to amend the Bill to include a new Clause 1, the short title of which shall be Duty of Minister in relation to clean air, and the text of which shall be as follows: It shall be the duty of the Minister of Housing and Local Government to promote a policy of clean air and to secure by all means the execution by local authorities of such a national policy. These words are not new. In Section 1 of the Water Act, 1945, is a similar text. I have lifted the text straight from that Act. It will be a simple declaration to display the determination of Parliament. That is essential at the outset.

There are many serious short-comings to the Bill. It is ill-drafted. It is much too leisurely, it has wide escape routes and—I speak as a Tory, as an employer and as a member of the Federation of British Industries—the hand of the Federation of British Industries is writ large between the lines. I ought to know. I presented a much tougher Bill to this House last February and members of the Federation of British Industries tried to dissuade me.

The economic consequences of smoke are very great and of such urgent importance today, mostly on account of our national fuel and power position. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Fuel and Power was responsible yesterday for launching a national campaign for greater industrial fuel efficiency. The Prime Minister, addressing the National Union of Manufacturers at lunch time today, put this at the head of all the matters to which he alluded in his speech.

On whichever side of this House we may sit, and without commenting upon matters affecting nationalisation, we know that the coal position is most critical. In the last three years, coal production has been almost stationary. This year, 1955, as the result of the unfortunate strike in South Yorkshire, and through many other causes, coal production is no less than 3½ million tons lower than last year and the two preceding years. The tendency seems to be for coal production to continue to fall. I doubt whether there would have been an autumn Budget had it not been for the very heavy burden of having to spend £80 million on coal imports this year, largely from North America and paid for in dollars, supplemented by additional expenditure on foreign exchange to bring in more and more fuel oil as a substitute for coal. The burden of these imports was largely responsible for the necessity for an autumn Budget.

In the past, I have been critical of Her Majesty's Government in fuel efficiency matters. Today I compliment my right hon. Friend the Minister of Fuel and Power on his new fuel efficiency campaign, for it is indeed propitious. The Measure before the House, although of great consequence on health and social grounds, is fundamentally of importance to all of us, because it is the only practicable means of legislating for fuel efficiency. By legislation we can only attack the visual evidence, namely smoke, of the inefficient burning of coal, which continues to be our primary source of fuel and power.

I have used the term before, and it would not be out of place to use it again this afternoon. The concomitant of the faulty combustion of raw bituminous coal is dark and black smoke. It is against the dark and black smoke from industrial chimneys that the spearhead of the Bill should be directed. There may be misapprehension in this matter, so let me add that domestic smoke, though injurious because it is discharged at a low level, is rarely or never dark and black. Dark and black smoke contains millions of particles of half-burned bituminous coal and is the result of faulty combustion in industrial boilerhouses.

There is a prodigious waste of coal in industry today, as the Minister of Fuel and Power made clear when he launched his campaign 48 hours ago. There is a vast difference between the coal-burning-efficiency standards of the best and of the worst within a single industry. I will not fall into the error of generalising by saying that all industry is guilty of wasting coal in its factories and boilerhouses, for that is manifestly not so, but I would quote again to the House some of the information derived from the chief scientist of the Ministry of Fuel and Power. For instance, a survey of brick-making in continuous kilns showed that, for a comparable output of bricks, the most efficient coal-burning brickworks used one-ninth of the coal used in the most inefficient brickworks, a ratio of 1 to 9. It is that kind of thing which is largely responsible for the emission of dark and black smoke into the atmosphere. All this is covered by the first two Clauses of the Bill, although somewhat inadequately.

I turn to the comments made by the right hon. Lady the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill) about the suitability of fuel burnt in industrial boiler-houses. The lowest grade of coal, even slurry, may be burned in industrial boiler-houses practically smokelessly, and with only a light haze of smoke emitted but no dark or black smoke, provided that a series of conditions is complied with. There must be, of course, a chain-grate mechanical stoker of suitable design and replacement of the tens of thousands of boilers that are still hand fired in outdated and obsolescent boilerhouses all over the country. A mechanical stoker is essential. There must be a correct primary and secondary draught to the boiler, and there must be correct lagging of the steam pipes and smoke alarms and recorders. There must be a fully qualified boilerman in charge of the boiler. If these conditions are complied with, then the very lowest grades of coal may be burnt in any industrial boilerhouse almost smokelessly.